


Cry Me a River

by Rhycake



Series: A Collection of Cryptids and Gods and Angels and Demons [1]
Category: Original Work, Tyrants of Nevermore
Genre: Anxiety, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Drowning, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Gore, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, I honestly dont know what else to tag, If You Squint - Freeform, angels are mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28364511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhycake/pseuds/Rhycake
Summary: He opens his mouth and watches with pure child wonder as bubbles come out instead of air. They float away from him, towards the light — Oh, yes. There it is. The surface. It seems so far away and  he wonders why that is. He was just up there, moments ago. The silhouettes that dance remind him of ducklings, swimming and scattering away while avoiding the lily pads and flowers.He wants to go with them.How can he do that?The God of Fear falls into a pond. More news at 10.
Relationships: Iris Vernada and John Beelzebub
Series: A Collection of Cryptids and Gods and Angels and Demons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077272
Kudos: 2





	Cry Me a River

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so so much to Neec for beta-reading as always
> 
> and thank you guys for being patient with me. Carry On is on hiatus rn and idk if i'll ever finish it tbh, i've rewritten the damn thing so many times it's so taxing to even look at it but aaah who knows qwq
> 
> Enjoy this horror fic of mine. idk if it's horror, but, uh, Iris is involved so who knows

_Now shut your dirty mouth_

_If I could burn this town_

_I wouldn't hesitate_

_To smile while you suffocate and die_

_-Choke_

Water ripples. 

Water rips itself apart, taking everything along with it. It forms and shapes itself in whatever way it wants — it’s a liquid. 

A liquid.

_Liquid._

Curious, wasn’t it? How these words had meaning, and they tasted so weird and strange on his tongue. _Liquid_. Liquid and water are both strange and new. He wants to touch it — he will.

Tentative hands find themselves being plunged deep into the cold, breaking tension, going further and further and further until there’s nothing but blue and cold and water. They keep going, trying to grab hold of everything and anything but to no avail, the water ripples and slips through pale, nimble fingers. There is nothing to hold on to. There is only water and cold and blue and John wonders, for a brief second in time, if this is what drowning feels like. Blue fills his lungs, swirls in his insides until he can’t breathe. 

Breathe.

 _Breathe_.

_Why couldn’t he breathe?_

He opens his mouth and watches with pure child wonder as bubbles come out instead of air. They float away from him, towards the light — Oh, yes. There it is. The surface. It seems so far away and he wonders why that is. He was just up there, moments ago. The silhouettes that dance remind him of ducklings, swimming and scattering away while avoiding the lily pads and flowers.

He wants to go with them. 

How can he do that?

His limbs feel numb and his eyes feel heavy. And the shadows don’t answer him; how rude of them to avoid his beckoning calls from the deepest part of his mind. And how long has it been, since he’s stayed here in the cold? A few seconds? Minutes? He can’t really tell, not with the water behind his eyes threatening to push them out of his lids, even as he blinks as delicately as possible—

John feels his back hit something. Something? The ground — yes! — below him. He lets his body thud against the floor, scraping at the ground, letting it peel away the skin from his fingertips. It is rough and grainy, and it is sharp against his back, and he decides he’s had enough when he feels a large pain start to build from his lower back, creeping upwards like a spider. Unwelcomed, intruding spider.

He’s never liked the little pests. They always ended up sewing his eyes shut or injecting venom through his throat. But, no matter. 

The God gathers up what little strength he has left and brings his legs up, watching as his knees rise slowly and carefully through the dark blue liquid. Water or whatever it is called. He feels a strange sensation rise up his skin, pricking at the muscles and bones but he decides it’s not important. No, he pushes himself up until he’s sitting. He blinks at the strange, muffled sound of something snapping. Like a twig being stepped on.

_Crack!_

And he looks down.

His hand, frail and weak as it may be, was turned the opposite way from him, displaying itself awkwardly. He lifts it up — or at least tries to — and listens to the sound of more crunching and snapping and he can’t really feel his hand. Not anymore. It dangles like a loose thread and he holds back a laugh, not wanting to get more blue where it didn’t belong. Do his lungs still ache for fresh air? He tries to inhale and — Yes, they do. 

John takes his other hand, his right, and grabs hold of the broken left and twists it around. And around. Until it snaps back in place. He tries to wiggle his fingers but it floats uselessly in front of him. Could he call it floating? He isn’t really sure, but, it’s there and he tries to slam it to the floor—

 _Crack_.

 _Crack, crack, crack_.

The trip to the surface was longer than he would’ve liked. He’d forced his legs to cooperate and push his body off of the floor with enough force to no longer feel the sharp pains against his spine that dug in through the skin, and the only real struggle he’d had was getting out of the water itself. There was cobblestone there — he had been inside the pond in the garden — and his fingers twitched and desperately tried to grab at whatever he could feel to drag his whole body out of the tar pit of water. His hair was damp and his mouth had let liquid spill from his throat, vile and harsh and burning against the flesh of his insides, and he’d lost his scarf.

He is still sad about the last bit, even as he staggers to the entrance of the old house, steadying himself with a hand against the wall.

 _Never lose it_ , Crocus had said as he wrapped the gift around his neck. _You’ll grow cold without it_.

He is two steps inside the house when he sneezes, shivering in something akin to cold as the water seeps out of him and slowly, begrudgingly, seeks out to return to the pond. 

Pond.

The pond.

“When did we get a pond?” he asks the silence. It gives no response and John clicks his tongue in disappointment,

Wandering through the Vernada mansion is, in a way, like walking through The Looking Glass. It’s haunting yet cheerful; beautiful yet fear inducing; and cold and harsh but warm and comforting all the same. John blinks away the bitterness in his eyes as he walks, feet trembling with every step as he takes in the view of the empty halls, free of laughter and shouting and the great smell of burning flesh coming from the kitchen, and John misses it all terribly.

How long has it been? An hour or so? He can’t remember, not really.

Drowning hadn’t been in his plans. It just sort of happened, as most things do. He remembers that, as a deity of fear itself, he can only feel it in the smallest forms like a prick of a needle on his finger: the pain is there and it stings but it eventually goes away if you don’t pay attention to it. It had taken him so long to realize his _purpose_ — so to speak. To see that the anxiousness of the population rise and fall with every step he took was curious, his hands always finding the nearest calm child to shove in an unwanted baggage of worries and thoughts that didn’t relate to anything at all.

 _Why am I so anxious,_ they’d cry and John would merely smile. 

_Because there is danger_ , he’d say.

 _Where? Where is it_ , they sobbed.

 _In here_ , he’d chirp and tap the person’s head. They’d cry and cry and then John would get bored and leave them to their tears. 

It always ended that way — well, except for that one occasion. 

He steps into the dining hall and finds empty plates already set for the evening dinner, untouched. A small, curious part of him wants to shatter the plates to see what sound they could make, to fill in the emptiness that surrounds him, but John decides against it. He can only assume Atlas set the table and he’d rather not treat his younger brother’s work as garbage, even if all it takes is three easy steps: take out the plates, place the plates and leave the plates unbothered. 

He lets them be.

And as he opens and closes doors in search of life, any sign that he is not alone in this giant house, he starts to miss the water and its ripples and drowning. 

Drowning is such a funny word, isn’t it? Why did it mean to die? Why must one die when inhaling water, is it not good for you? Do you not _need_ water like a man needs his hands to write and eat and do his daily tasks? The feeling of your lungs going heavy after the liquid seeps through, causing them to overflow and collapse in on each other — there is no greater feeling, he decides while stepping on Demencia’s broken equipment, letting the glass shards sink in through the soles of his feet and rip it open to let beads of red spill out. It hurts and then it numbs and he keeps walking.

He misses drowning. 

He misses it as he peeks inside Angus’ room and finds it empty, blinking in shock to find his old items still there and cleaned and neatly positioned on his bed. He misses it as he closes the door and drags his crumbling legs to the next door, then the next, and then he carries on until he reaches the end of the hall, a single door left unopened.

John feels his finger twitch at the sight: the door is clawed where it is usually painted beautifully with white and the door handle appears broken, twisted and bended in an unnatural way. And the little jump his heart makes is new, the God pressing his trembling hand to his chest to steady it all out with deep breaths, but the feeling doesn’t fade, simply increases and he decides it’s pointless to do anything about it now. 

He presses the tip of his foot to the door and pushes it open, smiling thinly at the _creaking_ noise it does as it slides over the floor. His chest tightens and his eyes feel bitter.

“I thought I taught you to knock,” comes Iris’ drawl, grabbing John’s attention. He takes a step inside the room and the door closes, the soft fur of the demon’s tail brushing against his ankle. It feels as though a snake is crawling up John’s back, even as he steps to stand over Iris’ body, watching them breathe in and out as if they were asleep. 

They’re sitting pressed against the bed, head tilted back exposing their bare neck. Their hair is messy in locks of twisted purple and vibrant teal as opposed and John nearly laughs at how ridiculous it is, to see someone who prides themself in their ability to remain sleek and prime-perfect reduced to messy curls and messed up shirt, their eyes seeming distant and tired as they open to stare at him. He grins and Iris’ lips twitch.

“I did knock,” he lies and lifts his foot to show the Joker. It’s bleeding and purple from bruises he doesn’t recall ever having and he lifts it up, up, up so Iris can see the shards of glass that have dug into the flesh. “Look what it did to me.”

“You knocked with your foot.” John’s grin turns into a smile, watching Iris’ eyes open and close as they start to fully wake, their voice laced with familiar venom and strange tiredness. John can’t put his finger on it, on why it sounds so distant and foreign. He blinks in wonder as Iris lifts their foot and then—

They slam it into John’s knee. The joint feels as though it breaks and he falls to the floor with a weak gasp, resting right next to the Jester’s hip. They hum in amusement and John lets out a weak laugh, “Yes. Yes, I’m sorry.” He mumbles and turns to his side and, ah, there is the same heavy feeling from the water he’d felt earlier. Yes. Yes, this is drowning. Drowning in his own pain and tears and, well, Iris joins in with a soft chuckle.

“I was having a nightmare.” And nightmare means dream. John remembers the rules and so, how one thing means the other. How love means hate and how beautiful means disgusting. Iris picks John up by the back of his neck and sits him upright, makes sure he doesn’t hunch over, and says, “Or maybe it was a dream.”

John licks his lips. They’re chapped and cut and probably blue from the water. They taste sweet, at least. He looks at Iris and mutters, “What did you see?”

“A rose,” they start. Their voice feels like paper being crumpled and then reverted back to its original shape and then, once again, crumpled. John’s heart races. “A single rose in a vacant room. And then came this voice, from the back of my mind, that kept calling out to me.”

“What did it say?” 

With an exhale the demon closes their eyes, tilting their head back further into the bed, letting curls of purple and green mix with white. They murmur words under their breath, voice going lower and lower and creeping up John’s spine unpleasantly. He smiles and waits patiently for the whispers to grow quiet but, even after Iris’ mouth is still, he can hear the quiet voice in his ears. Iris pulls at the collar of their shirt, as if the material was choking them, and says, “Dia.. Dim… Something along those lines. And you know how it is with these dreams, don’t you?” 

He doesn’t. He doesn’t dream, he doesn’t have nightmares — he can’t. He closes his eyes every night and every night he’s busy poking out people’s eyes in their makeshift worlds and causing children to wake up with a rapid beating heart, crying and kicking at the sudden anxiety.

He doesn’t know how it is.

He simply smiles and says, “You hate roses.”

Iris blinks. And then says, “Mm. I do hate them, they’re bland and stupid.” 

“It’s just a flower.”

The Joker opens their eyes wide with the pupils turned to slits when they look at John. And Iris is no God, they are no real threat. Or so his mind tells him. As they reach out and run a hand through his hair, revealing his second eye, they grin a large and wide smile and John’s body gives up. It caves and he isn’t sure if he can move anymore or if he will ever move again, watching with wide eyes as the doctor reaches out and sinks a single claw into his eye socket.

“You’re just a boy,” they say and _pull._ It feels like pulling at John’s finger or leg, nothing too painful. At least, it doesn’t feel painful.

John isn’t really sure of _what_ he can feel, anymore, but he nods and smiles anyway. “I am. I’m _your_ boy.” He says it quietly and it doesn’t seem to reach their ears. He sees no flick of the ears and his throat clasps in on itself as he feels the veins and optic nerve leave his body.

Iris pulls and pulls and says, “You are my boy. And I’m so disappointed you made a stupid mistake like this.” 

_That hurts_ , he thinks and it startles him. Thinking? Think. To think and ponder — Yes! That’s neat. That is, it’s neat to be thinking at a time like this, while he watches quietly as Iris holds his eyes in between two claws delicately. 

John has watched the doctor examine their meals the same way; arms, hands, legs, brains, hearts — he has seen _all of it_. And the way they’re looking at his eyes seems similar and he swallows down the bile that creeps up his throat, salty and sweet but he doesn’t remember ever eating at all. When was the last time he ate? One or two weeks ago, maybe. He focuses on the eye.

“John,” Iris says and leans in close. They lean in, just the tiniest bit closer, and John’s smile becomes strained. He can’t seem to get it to calm down — his body, that is. It’s numb and won’t cooperate but it’s also causing his heart to race, pound repeatedly in rhythm as if there was something in front of him that could attack him. That doesn’t make sense. “Look,” the doctor murmurs and holds up the eye for John to see.

It’s bloody. Of course it is. He blinks, watching it disappear behind an eyelid then reappear, just as bloody. His vacant socket feels numb — just like the rest of his body, as if a few hundred needles had been jammed into it. He holds his smile up with his fingers and looks back up at Iris, purple eyes unblinking.

“What is this?” Iris asks.

“My eye,” he says.

Iris’ smile grows wider and they hold up the eye for John to see better, clearer. Held neatly between two claws, spun gently as if it were a glass orb. “It’s infected,” they muse and John doesn’t understand. _Cuts_ get infected. He hasn’t cut his eye. Not really.

To be fair, it seems funny to joke about something like that when John’s body feels as though it will collapse soon. He can feel it. He can feel himself hit the bottom of the pond all over again — his bones are already aching and begging to be broken. “How did it get infected?” he chirps. Chirp. Happy and not in pain — _chirps._

Iris doesn’t seem to like it. He can’t really tell but their smile doesn’t feel friendly anymore. “Where were you before you walked in? Before you,” they start to pinch at the eye, slowly digging their claws in between the two fingers, and John feels the _sharpest_ pain in his head. He can’t tell why, but Iris continues, “walked in and disrupted my sleep. What were you doing?”

“This feels like a lot,” he wheezes out in laughter. There’s the stinging from before, when his eyes felt as though they were going to pop out due to the water, and it pricks at the corner of his remaining eye. “I was, uh..”

The Joker waits. Waits and waits and waits and with every _wait_ they slowly sink their claws in deeper and deeper until the pain in John’s head becomes too unbearable. It feels as though a butcher has taken his knives and shoved them all in through John’s eye socket, and then the butcher leaves him with the pain. Pain. Funny.

He’s never felt _pain._

He's only ever felt cold.

“Drowning,” he gasps. Iris’ fingers stop. Their head tilts.

“Drowning,” they parrot. It doesn’t sound _happy._

“Yes, I walked into the pond and drowned.” Simple as that. So simple. He smiles a tiny one and Iris pulls at the little cord that’s connected to his poor, infected eye and slowly starts to wrap it around a finger as if it were a string. John watches them, unsure if he can keep the bile building back up in his mouth.

“I’m happy you’re alive.” They grab John’s collar at the front and pull him up as they rise from the floor, eye still clutched in their hand, the cord coiled tightly around their finger. “But you’re a mess. I don’t like messes all that much — unless it’s food.”

“I know.” He knows.

Iris holds him tightly in their grasp, tearing through the fabric of his shirt as they pull him along and he’s not sure why. He’s always loved to follow the Joker around, even if the situation got tricky and such! He remembers that one time when—

They start down the stairs and Iris speaks up, sounding apologetic behind that smile, “I’m going to have to clean you.”

John’s legs feel broken. He tastes poison in his mouth as he laughs in quiet gasps. “What’s that?” he asks. 

“You’re human, you know.” _That_ , he’s always known. John nods and he supposes Iris feels it (or maybe they choose to believe he nodded) because they continue, dragging him down the stairs and forcing him to turn a corner with his crippling body. “Humans die easily. It doesn’t matter if you’re a _god_ or not, you’ll die. Something as tiny as an infection can cause you to die, John.”

The God sputters out some words, covered in muck and bodily fluids that spill down to the floor as they trot through the empty mansion. The floor creaks as they enter a room, white with several medical equipment laid out on a table. “You didn’t answer my question,” he whispers as Iris pushes him to the empty desk, with several cuffs laid out for the arms and legs and neck. They place his eye next to his cheek and John wants to scream at the way it feels.

Disgusting and cold and _icky_ and Iris just hums in amusement at it. They wipe away a smudge of John’s blood with their thumb.

“What’s cleaning?” John asks.

Iris smiles at him. “Did I say cleaning?” they muse and before John can answer the doctor walks over to a table and takes a jar of white fluids off of it. 

They approach the table again and John stares at the jar. The liquid sloshes around, small golden sparkles can be seen as it moves and it’s pretty. It’s pretty and he hopes it’s something _good_ —

“I meant cleansing.” Iris opens the jar and holds it over John’s face.

The God of Fear has never screamed before. Never begged nor cried nor have they ever panicked. But the moment the liquid filled up his socket until it overflowed, slowly like molasses and tar except white and pure and burning with so much worship and untainted essence, he _shrieks._

He screams until his vocal cords feel as though they’ve snapped and, unbeknownst to him, the water outside ripples.

It ripples and ripples and then it stills.

He stills.

And that’s...

  
  


xxxx

  
  


Iris turns the page to their book, eyes flicking over the manuscript tiredly, slowly grasping every dictation and footnote that they’ve left over the years. It’s a bore.

The bed creaks and they flick their ear at the noise, turning over another page, this time filled with mythology. The book could never decide on what type of book it wanted to be. The doctor likes it, anyway.

“Doctor?” comes the boy’s voice. Strained and quiet. Iris looks up at him.

“You’re having a nightmare,” they tell John. The god blinks in confusion. Iris reaches out and pulls the bed sheet over his chest once again, smoothening it out for him. “Go back to sleep.”

John stares up at them then looks back down at the sheet. “My eye hurts,” he says.

Iris stares at him briefly, then runs a hand through his hair. “It’ll pass,” they say and John makes a small noise of compliance. He closes his eyes and goes back to sleep.

And that’s that. 

**Author's Note:**

> Did you know John is based off asura from Soul Eater? It's a fun little fact.


End file.
